


A Vision of You

by Lizardbeth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: The Force Awakens, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-09-25 07:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17116676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardbeth/pseuds/Lizardbeth
Summary: Rey feels what he feels. The monster in the mask. Until he's not a monster anymore.





	A Vision of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cuddlesome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlesome/gifts).



On the _Falcon_ , Rey rubs her face. It stings, weirdly, but she thinks little of it between trying to escape, thinking of Finn, and definitely not thinking about anything else. Not Han. Not that … monster.

The flight is tense, and when they’re finally away, she stands from the pilot’s chair and has to catch herself on the seat back as a river of fire lances up her side.

Chewbacca turns his head and yowls a question.

“Nothing, I pulled a muscle. In the fight, or carrying Finn,” she explains and tries to stretch it out. But the twinge remains, along with a pain in her shoulder.

But it fades away, so she stops thinking about it. She’s busy trying to keep Finn warm and treat his wound as well as she can with the limited supplies on the ship.

On D’Qar, the mood of the base is jubilant, because of their victory. But she can’t share that feeling, exhausted, and she drifts away from the celebration, finding a room she can clean up in. She shuts the door, planning to wash her face. Her eyes feel gritty, and she catches herself rubbing her cheek again. Her skin itches.

From that flows awareness of her aches – bruises, mostly – but it’s her side that hurts most. She must’ve strained the muscle, because she sees no wound when she examines herself in the mirror.

Then, without warning, there’s someone else there. Another face in the mirror, as if the mirror's become a window.

Yelping, she whirls around to look behind her, but it’s simply the washroom. Cautiously she turns back around. The mirror is still showing her something else. _Someone_ else.

She sees him. He’s lying down, his face upward, and his eyes closed. The wound on his face looks raw.

She can see more, too, her eye drawn unwillingly down his neck to his bare torso. He’s very… broad.

But where his chest sinks inward to a flatter stomach, she sees another wound – deep, burned, oozing with blood.

Her hand goes to her side, to where she feels the dull throb.

“No,” she whispers in denial, shaking her head. She is not feeling his wounds, she’s not, that’s impossible. He may be some kind of dark Jedi, but she’s not. Just because he peeked in her head, and she peeked in his, doesn’t mean they’re connected across hundreds of light-years.

But when a medical droid begins cutting away the burnt flesh and she feels a twinge each time, she can't deny the truth. There’s a connection.

She puts a fist in the mirror, breaking it, and she no longer sees him or herself in any reflection, but she still feels each twinge.

At first it’s a dull echo but then, abruptly, it sears like fire. He’s awake, she thinks – he was unconscious before, now he’s not, as the droid works methodically to irrigate and staple the wound closed.

It hurts. The pain wraps around her spine and spreads to her chest so she can barely breathe. She staggers to the cot in the next room, and curls up. She holds a hand against the phantom wound.

Why is this happening? Not just the connection, but why is he in this much pain? Why is there no better treatment? Even on Jakku she’d had small bacta patches and the occasional anesthetics for wounds. But for Kylo Ren, nothing?

Only pain.

The intensity fades to a nauseating throb, and she drifts off to sleep finally.

In the morning, she wakes. Her muscles are stiff, as if she slept curled up and rigid all night. Gingerly she stretches. There’s still an echo of someone else’s wound in her side, so that hasn’t gone away. But it feels more tolerable, and her face is only intermittently itchy from the lightsaber blow she gave him.

In the mess, she looks across the hall to General Organa, who looks pale and sleepless, though she still holds herself upright.

And unbidden she remembers something plucked from someone else’s memories:

A young boy’s voice: “ _But I don’t want to go. Please. Please don’t make me go_.”

The general’s voice, gentle but unyielding, “ _Ben, your uncle can help you_.’

“ _No, he can’t_ ,” Ben protests and then his vioce turns miserable. “ _No one can_.”

The general’s head turns sharply, her lips parting and shaping the word “Ben” as if she heard the voice, too. Her expression falters when her gaze lands on Rey instead of Ben, the disappointment like a sudden ash in the air between them.

She stares at Rey for a moment, from the other side of the room, and then crooks her fingers in a gesture to follow her.

They end up in a small office and Leia shuts the door. “Rey? Tell me everything that happened. I need to know.” It’s not really a request and Rey knows that.

So she tells it all – she starts on Jakku, and waiting for her parents, and she ends with yesterday’s … experience. Yesterday’s pain. And she touches her side where a Wookie bowcaster would have killed anyone else.

Leia’s expression stays calm and unreadable; She has far too many years of far too much control to falter at anything, even the knowledge that her husband is dead at his own son’s hand, and that son now has an odd connection to a scavenger girl.

“You have the Force,” she says finally. “That much is clear. What this… connection is between you, I don’t know, and don’t understand. But it seems a gift of the Force.”

“A gift?” Rey repeats. “How is this a gift? It hurts. And it’s not even my wounds.”

“Perhaps not a gift, then. An opportunity. If you can see him, feel him, maybe you can… I don’t know,” she admits. "It seems impossible." Weary regret slides across Rey, not her own. But it passes away and the Leia pulls up straighter and her voice turns brisk again. “He’s Snoke’s right hand. If you can use this connection to learn what the First Order intends... that would be helpful to the Resistance. But I can’t teach you how to use it. But Luke might, now that we have the map.”

She pulls the drawer open in the desk and withdraws the lightsaber that Rey brought back and passes it across the desk. “Take this to him. With the _Falcon_. Tell him what you told me.”

Rey takes it back, reluctantly. She wants to go back to Jakku, but she knows that’s not going to happen, not now.

Leia's expression softens and she tries to smile a little. "I'm sorry, Rey. It seems anyone caught up with my family gets pulled into our troubles. And it seems the Force has greater plans for you."

Rey looks down at the heavy metal hilt in her hand. She feels nothing from it now - no visions, no emotions, not even the warmth she'd felt when it had come to her hand in the snow. But she knows that means nothing when her side aches with someone else's injury. The Force seems a bit like a right bastard, as far as she can tell.

The wounds still twinge, healing slowly, on the trip to Acht-To. She doesn’t tell Chewbacca she feels an echo of his attempt to kill Kylo Ren, but she eyes the bowcaster with more respect.

She’s disappointed that Luke is a bitter old man, not the heroic Jedi she expected. And yet she realizes how absurd her expectations were-- his own nephew destroyed his temple and fell to the Dark. He failed, and he retreated in his failure. When he runs away from her, she lets him go and stays in the village, wondering what to do now.

She’ll stay and try to talk to him in the morning. Maybe once he realizes she’s not so easily put off, he’ll relent and teach her. She hasn’t even had a chance to explain the weird thing with Kylo yet, and she’s not leaving until she can find out how to stop it, or use it, or something.

When she sleeps, she falls into a strange dream. She knows in the dream that she’s dreaming, and yet it feels as real as the waking world.

She’s on a ship. She stands on a spotless shining floor. The bright white lights and regular bulkheads make it a First Order ship. She walks the corridor, but her footsteps make no sound and when she tries to talk to herself, she can’t.

A door to her left opens, and she turns, startled, to see Kylo Ren emerge. She steps back from him, aware that her hands are empty and he has his lightsaber attached to the belt at his waist. Masked and cloaked again, he seems a fearsome figure, but she remembers his face beneath and knows he’s just a man.

He doesn't approach her, and his gaze slides across her as if she doesn't exist. But he casts a look around as if he senses her presence, and his gloved hand touches his saber hilt before falling away. He inhales a deep breath and starts to walk away with a steady stride.

For lack of anywhere else to go, she follows along. This is happening, she’s certain of it. It’s not a dream, though she’s asleep. She wants to yell and rage at Kylo Ren – _What did you do to me_? – except she knows he won’t hear her. Whatever this is, it seems to be only one direction. Which doesn’t seem fair, but she stopped believing in that a long time ago, so she accepts and follows as it seems the Force wants.

Two bright red guards open double doors and Kylo enters. There are more red guards, and red drapes on the walls, and at the end of the large cavernous space, is a throne and a being wearing gold. His hairless head is scarred terribly, and his eyes – even in her non-existent form, she shivers. This is evil. This is Darkness.

Kylo Ren sinks to one knee and bows his head.

Supreme Leader Snoke curls his long fingers and his mouth sneers. “Take off that mask, boy,” he commands.

Kylo reaches us with both hands and opens the mask, lifting it off his head. The mark on his face is black with whatever it put on it to heal it.

“Supreme Leader,” he says and looks down again.

“You were sent to find Skywalker,” Snoke snarls. “You failed. Hux tells me, you had the map in your grasp and you let it escape. You had the girl in your grasp, and you let her escape. You had your father – Han Solo --” He stops and his lips curl into a smile, as Kylo flinches inward and takes a ragged breath. Rey feels his pain, but it’s not a physical wound she’s feeling, she realizes, but something deeper.

“You are weak,” Snoke pronounces.

Kylo’s jaw tightens, and his hands clench at his sides. Snoke sees this, too, though Kylo is looking down so he doesn’t see the pleasure radiating from Snoke.

“Supreme Leader--”

“You are weak, and you disgust me.”

Kylo’s head snaps up, his expression riven by anguish. “I did all you wanted!”

“You failed,” Snoke repeats, dismissively. “I thought you would be strong, and you would rise to the potential of your bloodline. But at every turn, you fail me.”

“I gave everything to you! To the Dark Side!”

“Perhaps the girl will be a better apprentice,” Snoke muses.

It’s too much for Kylo, who lunges with a yell, toward Snoke, lightsaber lit in his hand.

Snoke flicks his fingers, halting Kylo in mid-air as if he hit a wall and he slams to the floor. Snoke rises from his throne, looking down at Kylo.

“You would attack me, you pathetic child? You will never defeat me. I _own_ you,” he hisses. “I own your soul. And disobedience must always be punished.” He holds out both hands and lightning emerges and strikes Kylo.

It strikes Rey, too. It’s pain that she could never have imagined before, every nerve of her body is on fire, and it’s only an echo of what he’s feeling. He cries out, writhing, as the Dark Force energy arcs through him.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry _,"_ he calls, pleading for a mercy that doesn't come.

Again and again, Snoke hits Kylo, and Rey shares it.

Until, abruptly, it stops. Darkness slides between her and Kylo, and when she opens her eyes again, the pain’s gone.

She’s back in Acht-to, and she’s looking at Luke, who’s crouched beside her bedroll, frowning deeply.

“He’s hurting him,” she blurts out. “I can feel it. He hurts so much.”

“Who?” Luke asks.

“Ben. Snoke – he’s torturing Ben. With lightning. I saw it. I felt it.” She closes her eyes and when she thinks of him, she can see it: he’s flat on the floor, body twitching and his heart leaping irregularly, though the lightning has stopped. Worse, she also knows, perhaps from him, this isn’t the first time Snoke has done this to him. Nor is it the first time that Snoke has watched him suffer, his own pleasure at the sight a loathsome miasma in the Force. 

She opens her eyes and looks straight at Luke. She knows now what the Force wanted; she had to see and  _feel_ what he did to understand the true fight. “I need you to train me. In the Force. To be a Jedi. And then I’m going to rescue Ben from the claws of that madman.”

His gaze flicks away. “Rey, you don’t know--”

She sits up, unwilling to confront him from her back. “I know what he’s done. Probably better than you, because I’ve been in his mind. I’ve seen it. There’s light there. So much light Snoke hasn’t been able to crush it out of him, but if we don’t save him, Snoke wins. The Dark wins.”

She holds out her hand and doesn't even need to call for the lightsaber to fly to her, as if it can't wait to go with her.

"We have to save him."

 


End file.
